Asbury Park Connected Sheikh, Who Avows Terror, Now More Influential Than Ever

It was revealed earlier this year that Asbury Park New Jersey’s boardwalk real estate is owned and controlled by an Islamic company from the Middle East, Capital Guidance. That company maintains a “Sharia Board” headed by a powerful Pakistani Sheikh, Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani.

Usmani wrote a book, Islam and Modernism, urging jihadists to lay in wait in Western countries until they have enough people here to launch “Jihad with Power.” He wrote that Jihadists should continue to kill until we submit to his religion, Islam.

You’d think the man who wrote that book would not be allowed to do business in America. Shockingly, in addition to Asbury Park’s boardwalk buildings, that same company owns a subsidiary selling Sharia-complaint mortgages and has closed over 10,000 loans in 23 states. They did so with the help of your tax dollars, through the Department of Treasury’s Freddie Mac program. Housing “Sharia adherents” all over America is an interesting business for a man who says America needs more terrorists.

Sheikh Usmani is a leader of the “Deobandi” movement. Deobandi is a huge movement formed in 1867 seeking a stricter adherence to fundamentalist Islamic principles. Usmani runs a Deobandi madrassa (school) with 10,000 adults studying Sunni/Hanafi ideas.

Deobandi has had at least 4 terror offshoots, one of which you’ve certainly heard of: The Taliban in Afghanistan. Usmani was the go-between when Pakistan wanted to talk to the Taliban. In addition to the Taliban, Deobandi has birthed terror organization less known in America but feared elsewhere: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Sipah-e-Sahaba.

Usmani’s madrassa is Darul Uloom Karachi. It has reported terror ties. As reported in Stanford University’s study “Mapping of Militant Organizations,” citing the South Asia Terror Portal, a man known as Maulvi Sibghatulla had ties to that school. He also ran the Al-Rashid Trust with two others, which turned out to be the conduit to funnel money directly to Usama bin Laden.

When Wall Street Journal reporter Danial Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi and killed, it was 3 members of the aforementioned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi that led police to his body, buried on property owned by the very same Al-Rashid Trust.

Sheikh Usmani has famously refused to sign a fatwah (formal Islamic opinion) opposing suicide bombings in Pakistan, and it was lamented that lives would be saved if he did.

Last year the heads of many prominent madrassas were summoned to a meeting by the Pakistani government, because a bank froze over 200 accounts that were in the name of unregistered schools. The accounts were actually fronts for terror funding. That followed a government initiative against terror which ensued after a bomb killed nearly 150 schoolchildren. Usmani was one of those madrassa chiefs summoned to the meeting. While the clerics agreed to have their bank accounts monitored, he and the other clerics complained about the government “harassing their students” and how bad it looks whenever they get raided.

Why revisit Sheikh Usmani now? Each year the Jordanian Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center issues the “Muslim 500” report, which lists the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. Last year Sheikh Usmani was number 22. This year he has moved up to number 6. To put that in perspective, there are approximately 50 majority Muslim countries. Sheikh Usmani is more influential than the heads of state of 45 of them.

Interestingly, a new addition to the Muslim 500 this year is Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s most trusted advisor, with this bio:

Huma Abedin is currently vice chairwoman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for President. She has worked for Clinton in different posts (deputy chief of staff, traveling chief of staff) since starting as an intern in the White House in 1996. She is regarded as the closest aide Clinton has, and this accessibility to the likely next President of the USA makes her influential.

Note that well – Hillary is “likely” to be the next President. You heard it from the Muslim 500 first.

The Company Usmani advises here in the United States, Capital Guidance, also has another member of their Sharia Board on the Muslim 500, Sheikh Yazim Yaquby of Bahrain.

What keeps a man as repugnant as Sheikh Usmani doing business in America? Money – lots of money. Usmani is a rock star in Islamic Finance, a $1.1 trillion industry where only a few scholars are allowed to approve transactions. In addition to our own Department of Treasury holding their nose and doing business with Usmani, he advises companies all over the globe to ensure their products are in keeping with Sharia law.

To question the 6th most influential Muslim in the world on his views about terror, you’re going to draw attention from a great deal of rich and powerful people around the world, which is why, I suppose, no one ever does.

Tommy De Seno is an attorney, a journalist and a contributor to the website Ricochet.com